Bruce Goode

Hot Potatoes in Idaho

Driver was fine.

Google Places - Map Listings

Ever wonder what the heck someone is talking about when they mention Google Places, Google Maps, or the map listings?

If so - this video is for you.

 

 

What's the deal with Google's personalized results

My opinion on the following video

 

Basically the speaker is concerned that with Google and Facebook showing personalized results to everyone (every person’s search results for the same keywords are different) is cause for concern.

He equates it to the early days of newspapers when the local editor dictated the news that the townsfolk received.

Sort of how now you can chose your news slant by selecting to watch Fox News or MSNBC with the difference being that Google chooses for you.

Rather than debate the big brother issues, I am more concerned about how this affects the search marketing efforts of my websites and those of my clients. One of the big “reveals” on the video above is that depending on where you are located when you search, the computer being used and what kind of browser you are surfing on affect what you will see in your search results.

Well Duh!,   Google has been serving geo located results for over a year now, in fact over 70 percent of the results returned are for a local result.

Here is an example of a local result.

If Google believes that you will be better served by seeing a local result you will see the maps results displayed at the top of the page.  For example if you search for “flowers” Google will assume that you would be interested in local flower shops in addition to national mail order companies.

What does that mean for local florist? When Google switched to this it was the greatest day of your internet marketing life (even if you missed the memo). You can now EASILY compete with national companies that spend millions of dollars annually trying to get to the top of as many search results as possible. Just make sure your company is in the top 7 map listings.

What about ecommerce companies – your work just got a lot harder since map listings and video results are now pushing listings farther down the page. You are going to have to jump into social media since Google now uses that as an indicator, add some videos to youtube and other video aggregators, add more content to your main site and keep acquiring backlinks would be a good start.

Ok, that covers where you are sitting when you search, but what about the type of computer and which browser? Well, since over 50% of all searches take place on a mobile computer instead of desktops that one’s easy. Most websites don’t show up well or at all on mobile phones, ipads won’t display flash. Google has a completely different index for mobile search. To make sure your company shows up in as many results as possible make sure that your site displays well on mobile devices.

One final note, just because Google shows you different front page results than other folks doesn’t mean you don’t have access to same information that they do. Don’t always settle for the first page of results, check out a few more pages or start using longer tail keywords for your searches. For example if you are interested in researching “types of flowers” search for that keyword phrase instead of just “flowers”.

backhoe

I don't know how I ever survived without a backhoe.